1. Field of the Invention
This invention pertains to the field of computer graphics systems, and more specifically to such a system wherein Optoelectronic Integrated Circuits (OEICs) and computer generated holograms are used to provide parallel processing of image data.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A computer stored scene (for example, a scene that comprises a number of objects, such as books lying on a desk top) is digitally stored by describing the objects in terms of their three-dimensional coordinates. Prior to display, the objects are decomposed into a sequence of polygons, or other simple primitive shapes.
The above-mentioned sequence of polygons are conventionally displayed by way of converting the polygon shapes into their basic x,y, or x,y,z coordinates, and often additionally into the shade or color of the polygons. In order to visually display such a scene, these stored coordinates must first be converted into pixels. This conversion operation is time consuming and costly since there are often thousands of such primitives in a scene, each individually comprising thousands of pixels.
The present invention uses well-known OEICs as components thereof; i.e., integrated circuit devices generally comprising a two-dimensional array of input light detectors, each detector being series connected to one or more semiconductor circuit elements and to an output laser. An exemplary form of known OEIC is described in the article entitled "An Optically Controlled Digital Optical Matrix Processor", SPIE, Vol. 1773 Photonic Neural Networks (22-24 Jul. 1992) at pages 201 through 207, which article is incorporated herein by reference.
As is well known, OEICs of this type can be configured as Programmable Optoelectronic Logic Arrays (POLAs) and as Arithmetic Logic Unit Programmable Logic Arrays (ALU POLAs), such as are used in the present invention.